Science, Morality, and the Right Answer

Following my post last week on Sam Harris, two commenters, Sue and Kevin, have stood in support of the empirical discoverability of moral truths. Theistic natural law theorists would agree with them: we can discover moral truths by observing ourselves and each other in society. God created us in his image, and even though we bear his image imperfectly since the Fall of Genesis 3, nevertheless we can know something of his moral nature. C.S. Lewis showed this admirably in The Abolition of Man.

What kind of moral truths do we thus discover? Theists say they are reflections of God, and thus expressions of what reality is in its ultimate nature. What I am getting from Sue and from Kevin are views like,

I think Harris wants it to be possible for more people to have a good quality of life and fewer people to have a bad quality of life. I think he is saying that our sense of “morality” is useful only in the context of achieving this. This concept of “morality” differs drastically from the concept that it is a preordained thing to be discovered….

Where we really differ here is on the “ought” terms of the question of good and bad. Harris makes the case that morality defined in “ought” terms of obligation to an authority, is different from morality defined in “ought” terms of practicality as relates to improving the overall quality of life for humanity in general.

and,

I’m disputing whether the “ought” is really the basis of morality. I would claim that the “ought” is an abstraction from more concrete modes of being-in-relationship-with-the-other. So oughts can have a place in morality, but it is not foundational. Again, I am arguing for a virtue-based morality rather than a deontologically-based one. In phronetic activity we do not follow rules, but the correct action, with all the nuance and sensitivity that a high degree of skill has, is elicited from us by the situation.

In other words, oughtness is not at the bottom of morality, but is something having to do with relating rightly with one another, specifically to maximize well-being, happiness, or something of that sort. Sue said,

[Harris’s] point is we can use reason and logic both to identify- in the sense of coming to a decision or agreement- basic principles and characteristics of a good quality human life (as opposed to a bad quality human life). If we can reasonably assess the best interests of humankind relative to the good life, we can determine morality on the basis of those best interests, using reason, logic and the scientific method to pursue means of perpetuating the values, sensibilities, social, cultural and technological advancements that further those best interests.

Similarly, Kevin wrote,

Being stupid isn’t the same thing as being immoral, at least not in all cases. However, being ignorant of the causes of happiness (which is a more technical, generous, and, hence, correct term than “stupid”) does generally lead to immoral actions (=actions that cause oneself and others suffering and detracts from happiness). As with all virtue-based ethics, the motivation is of prime importance, not the merely external following of “oughts”.

I agree with both of them that there are such things as right answers to moral questions. I appreciate that neither of them is speaking as a moral relativist. I do not mean to imply they are in full agreement with each other, by the way, only that they seem to agree on the points I’ve lifted out here.

I remain perplexed, however, regarding their basis for moral decision-making. Both of them believe there is something good to be pursued, yet it seems to me they are letting too many assumptions slip in. Kevin expressed his view of morality most succinctly when he stated its opposite:

However, being ignorant of the causes of happiness (which is a more technical, generous, and, hence, correct term than “stupid”) does generally lead to immoral actions (=actions that cause oneself and others suffering and detracts from happiness).

I should note that for Kevin, “happiness” is not a shallow, surface emotion, but something considerably  deeper. Still it raises questions, to which I’ll return in a moment. Sue wrote,

But if the desired end is not for the survival of the species and progress of civilization, what is?

This is very problematic. For evolutionary theorists, the term “species” is so loose it’s hard to know what to make of an obligation to pursue its survival. Populations are always shifting, they say, from one species to the next. Evolution-believers like Peter Singer have raised doubts that humans have significance, moral or otherwise, above other species. Some have suggested the best thing we could do for the earth would be to virtually exterminate ourselves, or that suicide could be adaptive. So there’s nothing self-evident, apparently, about humans’ survival being a desired end.

As for the “progress of civilization” or human well-being, what do they mean in practice? Again, there’s nothing obvious about the practical moral decisions to be made on those terms. Consider marriage, or example. Let’s suppose the current conflict over marriage should be decided according to the progress of civilization and the maximizing of happiness. What direction would that point us? For some, the answer is that marriage is maximized when the partners experience the greatest depth of personal fulfillment. Others would say it is when the partners practice the greatest mutual, self-sacrificial giving. Some would say that the last thing married partners should do is to procreate; the earth is already overloaded enough. Others would say the ideal marriage is one that seeks to build the next generation. Some would say marriage is a contingently defined human institution. Others would say it is a human reflection of the triune God. From those disparate positions, some would argue strongly for gay “marriage,” and some (myself included) would argue strongly against it.

Now, which of these represents progress? Which contributes to true happiness? Which reduces suffering most?

Before you weigh in with your opinion on those three questions, let me direct you to the real question I’m getting at. This is not a blog post about same-sex unions—I only used that as an illustration—it’s about morality and science. Sam Harris would apparently say that there is a definition of maximum marriage that is both right (or true or correct) and also discoverable by science. I’d like to know how he gets to a demonstrably right answer to questions like these, through strictly empirical means. I don’t think it can be done—not even in temporal terms, much less when eternal outcomes are included in the calculus. And therefore I am very, very skeptical of anyone’s claim (as in his book’s subtitle) that “Science Can Determine Human Values.”

You may also like...

99 Responses

  1. BillT says:

    “Sam Harris would apparently say that there is a definition of maximum marriage that is both right (or true or correct) and also discoverable by science. I’d like to know how he gets to a demonstrably right answer to questions like these, through strictly empirical means.”

    My question would be even if he can do the above, why should I care? If moral values are nothing but scientifically discoverable facts, on what basis do they compel anyone to adopt them as guidelines for their lives. Even if I concede that they’re “true” isn’t it still my choice whether to make them part of my personal moral code. And if I choose not to who will tell me I’m wrong and why should I care that I am “wrong”.

    This entire exercise, in my opinion, begs the question in a couple of ways. First, without a God to be the final arbiter, there is no justice for anyone (neither victim nor perpetrator) thus rendering adherence to a moral code a choice without consequences. Thus, even if moral “facts” are “true” it remains my choice whether to adopt them and “morality” you can choose isn’t morality at all.

  2. JAD says:

    Here is something Kevin wrote to Charlie over on the Sam Harris thread (#88, the PS) that I think is relevant here:

    Kevin: “I act ethically because I am drawn to compassionate action by my fellow men;”

    Jesus taught us to love (have compassion) for our neighbors (fellow men) as our selves. The story of the “God Samaritan” is one example of this. The interesting thing about Jesus’ story is that several people, including religious people, were passing by the victim of the robbery and treating him like he had no more significance than animal road kill. It can be argued then that ethics and morality is either not universal or not universally acted upon. What is the answer here? Why does society seem to be so dysfunctional? Even Sam Harris is conceding that point.

    I don’t think Jesus made up this story. I think this was something that actually happened and was in the “headlines” of the day. In other words, it was circulating by word-of-mouth.

    We know from the headlines of our day that the world is not the way it should be, because people do not act the way they should act. But based on Darwinian evolution, why should they?

    On the other hand, imagine a world where everyone practiced the ethics of the “Good Samaritan”. Would the world be a better place? I think the answer is pretty self evident, isn’t it?

    Kevin to Charlie: “you act ethically because a being told you to in a book, without which divine dictation we wouldn’t have an ‘ought‘.”

    Does Charlie hold to the dictation theory of the inspiration of scripture? I don’t remember reading anything that indicates that he does. (But maybe I missed that.) Very few Christians today, including evangelicals, hold to a dictation theory. Inspiration means that God inspired men, working through their distinct personalities and circumstances, to write His word. In other words, they were the ones, not only doing the writing, but also the thinking. The Spirit of God was influencing and guiding them. Kevin’s understanding of what Charlie believes, in my opinion, is quite cartoonish.

    Second, it is not correct, according to Christian theology, that we would not have a basis for morality or “oughtness” without the Bible or the ten commandments. For example, in Romans Paul writes:

    “2:14 Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”

    In other words, all human beings possess a moral sense or conscience. The Christian theist explains this as the way mankind was created by God. That means, whether they believe it or not, Kevin, Sam Harris and Sue all have a moral sense or conscience because that is the way God originally created mankind. However we also know that moral sense is dysfunctional. To use a crude analogy my car runs even if I don’t have, or I am ignorant of, the owners manual. However, the owners manual becomes very important when I begin to experience problems. It can help me determine what is wrong.

    I think it is very telling that neither Harris nor Kevin can explain how our morals and ethics can be grounded by a purposeless natural process. By definition Darwinian evolution is purposeless. A universal moral or ethical sense cannot be explained without purpose. So how does a purposeless process give rise to purpose? Remember if you hypothesize that ethics is something that you think can be determined empirical science, then it cannot be something that you simply believe. In other words, the burden of proof is on those who claim something is scientific. They need to establish it’s scientific validity.

    I get the feeling that Kevin and Harris are like a couple of amateurs looking under the hood of my car but don’t have a clue what how it really works or what is wrong. What makes them think they can tell other people how to live their lives?

  3. SteveK says:

    BillT,
    I agree with your sentiments. If nature has a moral code, why should I care? I will go one step further… I dare nature to do anything about it when I choose not to care for the other bipeds it created through naturalistic evolution. Nature won’t care (it can’t), but the other bipeds will. Now we’re back to the first question, why should I care?

  4. Charlie says:

    To comments 1, 2 and 3.
    I agree completely.

    Oops… 1, 2 and Four.

  5. JAD says:

    Thanks for the compliment Charlie. Did I accurately portray your position on the inspiration of the Bible?

  6. Charlie says:

    Hi JAD,

    Does Charlie hold to the dictation theory of the inspiration of scripture? I don’t remember reading anything that indicates that he does. (But maybe I missed that.) Very few Christians today, including evangelicals, hold to a dictation theory. Inspiration means that God inspired men, working through their distinct personalities and circumstances, to write His word. In other words, they were the ones, not only doing the writing, but also the thinking. The Spirit of God was influencing and guiding them. Kevin’s understanding of what Charlie believes, in my opinion, is quite cartoonish.

    To be fair to Kevin, I don’t think he was claiming that I hold to a type of Joseph Smith letter by letter dictation view. I think he used the word more for pejorative effect.
    But you are correct, I do not think that God dictated word for word, punctuation, et al, though I do hold to inerrancy. Paul tells us at times that he is giving his own point of view, but that in doing so he contends that he, too, has the Spirit. That seems to sum it up for me.

    In other words, all human beings possess a moral sense or conscience. The Christian theist explains this as the way mankind was created by God. That means, whether they believe it or not, Kevin, Sam Harris and Sue all have a moral sense or conscience because that is the way God originally created mankind.

    Exactly.

    I think it is very telling that neither Harris nor Kevin can explain how our morals and ethics can be grounded by a purposeless natural process.

    Kevin doesn’t think morality needs grounding. He sent me hours of reading material to explain his position and none of it even attempts to answer the question posed to him by explaining a grounding of morality; it merely points to the fact already elucidated by Scripture that we have a conscience and that it can be trained.

    So how does a purposeless process give rise to purpose?

    A great (rhetorical) question, to my mind. It seems obvious to me that it cannot. And without purpose how can you have morality?

  7. BillT says:

    SteveK,

    Yes, Harris’ argument is the secular equivalent of theological musings on “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. He wants to discover morality. He wants to show scientifically that it exists. However, he completely misses the fact that even if he does he has shown nothing.

    He misses the threshold issue that morality is inextricably tied to justice and man’s intrinsic value. If man has no intrinsic value then what does it matter how one treats another. We don’t ascribe moral value to the behavior of the rest of the animals on the planet, why should it be any different for man. It follows that if there is ultimately no justice for victims or offenders then what value is there in moral behavior.

  8. I think Sam Harris has gone too far, but…

    BillT,

    First, without a God to be the final arbiter, there is no justice for anyone (neither victim nor perpetrator) thus rendering adherence to a moral code a choice without consequences.

    Really?!! So, you don’t like being kind, fair, etc., you only act morally because you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife? I find that difficult to believe. When you pick up a wallet and return it to its surprised owner, you feel no pleasure?

    Also, what Harris is saying is that the consequences of your actions can be scientifically rated according to their consequences. I would agree with that. Where Harris must stop is at the point where he would say that one ultimate goal (e.g. humanitarianism) is better than another.

    But assuming we all agree that humanitarianism is a good idea, we ought to be able to get shared view of the consequences of policies scientifically.

    The problem is that Christians and Muslims (the people Harris is trying to convince) don’t give a &#^$ about measurable consequences and outcomes. Christians and Muslims are not humanists. If all humans burn, they think that’s not a terrible idea.

  9. SteveK,

    I agree with your sentiments. If nature has a moral code, why should I care? I will go one step further… I dare nature to do anything about it when I choose not to care for the other bipeds it created through naturalistic evolution. Nature won’t care (it can’t), but the other bipeds will. Now we’re back to the first question, why should I care?

    Oh NOW it’s all “why should I care?”

    Where was the “why should I care?” in the earlier debates?

    Harris says that, if you are a humanitarian, the consequence of doing X is unpleasant, and we can show it scientifically. You say, why should I want to be a humanitarian? Excellent point, Stevie!

    Now, please apply that same logic to the theistic position. Christians aren’t humanitarians per se. Rather, they think God comes first. So, if you are a Christian, and God says do X, then you think you should do X because God comes first, no matter what the consequences for humans. But why should I be a Christian and think God comes first? If God wants me to do X, why should I care?

    You can’t use the claim that God will punish me as leverage, because if you do, you would have to admit that personal pleasure/pain is the only motivator, and that sacrificing one’s life of pleasure for a moral principle is unreasonable. Or you would have to import some humanitarian values.

    The reality is that we’re motivated by pain & pleasure, our empathy with pain & pleasure, and by aesthetics.

    It’s aesthetically pleasing to you to have an all-powerful father figure who tells you to do what you ideally think you should do. You love it. You think this father figure tells you to dislike homosexuality because you think you should ideally dislike homosexuality, and God is an idealization of your own morality. God hates what you ideally hate, loves what you ideally love.

    But if I proved God didn’t exist, I don’t believe you would all start murdering and raping because I know you hate those things. Likewise, you’d still dislike homosexuality because I know you hate that, too.

    If you somehow came to believe that homosexuality was okay, you would reinterpret scripture so that the words against homosexuality were thrown in the same bucket with the words against eating shellfish. God wants what you want.

  10. Tom Gilson says:

    doctor(logic),

    I’m writing this after reading your comment #9 and before reading #10. If I have a response to #10 I’ll add it next. All I want to say so far is that your comment #9 is a cartoonish distortion of Christian belief, twisted and perverted in its implications and conclusions. What I want to ask is whether you did that on purpose or not.

  11. Charlie says:

    Uh oh. The great doctor of no logic got up on the wrong side of the bed before making his triumphant return.
    Chill, DL.

    BTW, you’re wrong about just about everything you say in your “Stevie” comment, and you’ve been shown this many times. People who say wrong things on purpose, what are they?

    re Christians aren’t humanists:
    http://onlinecatholics.acu.edu.au/issue115/news1.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_humanism

  12. Tom Gilson says:

    Okay, now in comment #10, after all our discussions over all these years, do you really believe,

    So, if you are a Christian, and God says do X, then you think you should do X because God comes first, no matter what the consequences for humans.

    If so, either we haven’t communicated clearly enough the character of God, or you haven’t been paying attention. Because that statement is just false. Tell me, are you interested in hearing a corrective perspective on it, or would you just keep on believing what you want to believe about Christians even if I gave you one?

    As for your (logic), this fails miserably:

    You can’t use the claim that God will punish me as leverage, because if you do, you would have to admit that personal pleasure/pain is the only motivator,

    Need I explain how it fails, or would you just keep believing what you want to believe if I did so? The logical fallacy fairly jumps out at me, so maybe on a second look you can see it too. Let me know one way or the other.

    This, on the other hand, is clearly special pleading:

    It’s aesthetically pleasing to you to have an all-powerful father figure who tells you to do what you ideally think you should do. You love it. You think this father figure tells you to dislike homosexuality because you think you should ideally dislike homosexuality, and God is an idealization of your own morality. God hates what you ideally hate, loves what you ideally love….

    If you somehow came to believe that homosexuality was okay, you would reinterpret scripture so that the words against homosexuality were thrown in the same bucket with the words against eating shellfish. God wants what you want.

    Shall I explain that too you, too, or would you just continue to believe what you want to believe about Christians and our beliefs?

  13. Tom Gilson says:

    I didn’t see Charlie’s comment before posting mine, and I’m willing to bet, since he would only have had two minutes, that he didn’t see even my first one here before his. No collaboration, but a pretty strong level of agreement—because it was that obvious.

  14. Charlie says:

    ‘Having ears they do not hear’ has never been so obvious to me as when DL comments.

  15. Tom Gilson says:

    How do you do that, Charlie?

  16. Charlie says:

    Magicks?

  17. BillT says:

    DL,

    “But assuming we all agree that humanitarianism is a good idea, we ought to be able to get shared view of the consequences of policies scientifically”.

    And just why should we agree on that. That is the point I have made a number of times. If human beings have no intrinsic value, if there is really no justice, if moral values are nothing but scientifically discoverable facts then there is no basis for humanitarianism. If morality is a choice then I can choose not to care about humanitarianism and there is nothing that says I should. If the above is an accurate description of the world we live in, humanitarianism is no better than it’s polar opposite.

  18. JAD says:

    Tom and Charlie,

    I was just out taking a walk thinking about what “doctor logic” had written and thinking how I might respond to him (?) only to get back and discover you two had said almost exactly the things I was going to say. So what is that now, 3 for 3?

    The only thing that I would like to add, as a question for DL, is who knows better about what someone like me (or Tom & Charlie) as Christians, believe or think? Why the projection and presumption? Can’t you simply ask Tom, Charlie and me what we believe and think? Isn’t that the idea of having a discussion?

    Did you meet a Christian out there some where who fits that stereotype? Is it ethical to prejudge other Christians by using those stereotypes? Is it okay to have prejudice towards religious people?

    How are you going convince anybody with your logic and reason, that they are wrong and you are right, when you do not have an accurate understanding of their beliefs?

  19. BillT says:

    DL,

    Your mischaracterization of what I said about justice is more than a little frustrating in light of this quote I made in post #8. “It follows that if there is ultimately no justice for victims or offenders then what value is there in moral behavior.” Hard to understand how that could be clearer but let me try. If the results from adhering to a moral ethic are ultimately nonexistent then adhering to that ethic is without value. Or, if being moral means nothing then morality means nothing. I hope this along with my post #19 gives you a better understanding of my position.

  20. Well, thanks everyone for ignoring my point.

    I think most humans are humanists. That includes Christians. However, Christians are rationalizing their humanism as coming from God.

    Everyone has short-term goals and immediate desires that conflict with long-terms goals and/or idealized futures. This is why everyone can be morally conflicted, even if morality is subjective.

    Christians rationalize that their long-term ideals are God-given absolutes. Of course, Christians don’t think it’s rationalization, they think they’re discovering moral truths about the universe and God’s intention for us to live ideal lives. Pretty convenient.

    However, what’s really blind is when Christians imagine that if God didn’t exist, that long-term goals and idealized futures would cease to exist, and either (1) we’d all revert to being chimps with really short attention spans, or (2) we would alter our ideals to include things we really dislike.

    Failure to acknowledge this means that Christians aren’t being honest with themselves.

    When examined carefully, Christian rationalizations fail to ground absolute morality, and fail to establish a need for absolute morality.

    Because I’m like an Alzheimer’s patient, I’ll pose this thought experiment yet again, as if I’ve forgotten that you’ll ignore it as you always do.

    Imagine God was subjectively evil. That is, imagine God is anti-humanist. Suppose God wants us to be violent, unfair, etc.

    Why be absolutely good, but subjectively evil?

    No one wants to be subjectively evil. People don’t want to be good in some abstract sense (e.g., good to God and evil to humans). They want to be good in a concrete, subjective sense. They want to be good in the way that makes them feel good.

    I predict you will ignore the thought experiment by saying that (in your reality) God doesn’t want what we think is subjectively evil. God wants what (you think) is subjectively good for humanity. Therefore, we ought to do what God wants.

    Well, I’m asking about this “therefore”. On what grounds ought we do what God wants?

    Either
    (1) we do it because we’re humanists first, and God knows how we can best fulfill our humanist goals, OR,
    (2) we do it because we absolutely ought to do what God wants even if it isn’t in our best interest (which ISN’T humanism).

    If the latter, then we also ought to follow the evil God, if he existed. (And aren’t we lucky that God happens to be a humanist?)

    If the former, then humanism has its own rewards, in the absence of God, even if our attempts at justice fall short of the ideal.

  21. BillT,

    If the results from adhering to a moral ethic are ultimately nonexistent then adhering to that ethic is without value.

    Okay, we live in a material universe. There’s no afterlife, no cosmic justice. The only justice is that which we create.

    Are you saying that in such a universe, you don’t want to be kind or fair? That you don’t want to create what justice you can?

    That if some people get away with murder, we ought not try to establish justice for the murderers we do catch?

  22. SteveK says:

    DL,

    Oh NOW it’s all “why should I care?”

    Where was the “why should I care?” in the earlier debates?

    Believe me when I say that I predicted you (or someone like you) would say something like that. Why should I care about the same situation when it is God, not nature, creating the moral reality?

    The short answer is that the nature of “nature” cannot possibly – even in theory – ground morality like the nature of a personal being such as God. Morality involves personal beings. A rock cannot be immoral, nor can this nature of yours that you love so much. All attempts to shoehorn morality into the essense of nature results in morality being redefined.

    I can give you the longer answer later….if you’re nice. 😉

  23. Tom Gilson says:

    doctor(logic),

    If this was your point,

    I think most humans are humanists. That includes Christians. However, Christians are rationalizing their humanism as coming from God.

    I didn’t ignore it. I addressed it and I called it special pleading. I asked if you wanted me to explain it, and I asked whether you would listen if I did. So far the evidence (today, and all the rest over something like five years of interaction) says you won’t. Would you care to prove me wrong? I don’t care to address anything else you’ve written unless you do. It would also entail your paying some attention to your errors of fact and logic that I identified last time.

  24. Tom Gilson says:

    But I’ll answer one thing anyway. You said,

    Okay, we live in a material universe. There’s no afterlife, no cosmic justice. The only justice is that which we create.

    Are you saying that in such a universe, you don’t want to be kind or fair? That you don’t want to create what justice you can?

    That if some people get away with murder, we ought not try to establish justice for the murderers we do catch?

    Sure. Why not?

    That’s a serious question for which I expect you to explain your answer. Please limit your answer to that which would obtain in the universe you have described here. Bear in mind that any assumptions you draw from your culture’s religious heritage, beliefs, or traditions must be excluded, or else their validity must be accounted for on materialist grounds. That includes the concept of justice.

    While you do that, please note well that the very premises of your question remain in dispute. I don’t think we live in that material universe. I do think that your conception of justice has a basis; a basis that depends not on anyone’s doxastic belief state or epistemological knowledge of God but in God’s ontological existence, his nature, and the way he has wired us all.

  25. SteveK says:

    DL,
    A little longer answer here in the form of a generalized response. I’m sure you can see the parallels to Christianity here.

    If some being was created for an intended purpose, and that purpose involved obligation to certain realities that could not be otherwise, would that created being be obligated to its intended purpose under any and all possible circumstances?

    I think the answer is always yes, and never no. That’s why I should care. It’s why you should care.

    Now, take the same statement and tweak it to fit within the confines of naturalism and I think you will see that the answer is the exact opposite.

  26. BillT says:

    DL,

    “Are you saying that in such a universe, you don’t want to be kind or fair? That you don’t want to create what justice you can?

    You are changing the subject. I didn’t say anything about what “I” want or what “I” would prefer. We were talking about the nature of morality as it relates to the intrinsic value of man and ultimate justice. And as I and others here have explained, morality is an empty concept outside of the existance of those things. Can you explain why morality matters if man is without intrinsic value. Can you explain why I should be a humanist if man is without intrinsic value. You claim that in the absence of God we should be moral and humanists. Why?

  27. JAD says:

    DL: “However, what’s really blind is when Christians imagine that if God didn’t exist, that long-term goals and idealized futures would cease to exist, and either (1) we’d all revert to being chimps with really short attention spans, or (2) we would alter our ideals to include things we really dislike.”

    Actually I think (imagine)that if an eternally existing transcendent intelligence (God) did not exist, nothing would exist. In other words, any discussion about chimps or anything else is rather pointless.

    DL: “Failure to acknowledge this means that Christians aren’t being honest with themselves.”

    Who are you to tell me, or any other Christian, what to think or believe?

    DL: “When examined carefully, Christian rationalizations fail to ground absolute morality, and fail to establish a need for absolute morality.”

    That’s just an assertion. You haven’t offered any proof at all.

  28. SteveK says:

    JAD,
    Not only is that last one an assertion by DL, he continues to ignore what Christianity teaches and what he’s been told many, many times. I tried to boil it down for DL in my last comment, here. The morality and the obligation to care about it is grounded in the necessary nature of God and who we are as created beings. Our opinions to the contrary don’t negate the obligations we were intended for.

  29. Tom,

    That if some people get away with murder, we ought not try to establish justice for the murderers we do catch?

    Sure. Why not?

    There’s no absolute reason. Only a desire. A motivation.

    But are you really saying that, if we could prove God didn’t exist, you would not want to establish justice, etc.?

    I don’t believe that.

    So I can only infer that you’re missing my point. An objective reason is not needed for a subjective desire to exist. And an objective reason does not automatically induce a subjective desire.

    Suppose you believe there is an objective reason for doing X AND you subjectively love doing X. If you discover that no objective reason exists for doing X exists, you still have a subjective reason to do X. The whole point of my thought experiments is to show that it, in fact, doesn’t work the other way around. If I were to show you an objective reason to do Y AND Y is subjectively abhorrent to you, you won’t care about the objective reasons.

    I don’t think objective “oughts” exist, nor do I think they can exist. I don’t see how God can create square circles, either. But it doesn’t matter because such “oughts” don’t compel.

    That’s a serious question for which I expect you to explain your answer. Please limit your answer to that which would obtain in the universe you have described here. Bear in mind that any assumptions you draw from your culture’s religious heritage, beliefs, or traditions must be excluded, or else their validity must be explained on materialist grounds. That includes the concept of justice.

    I disagree that they need to be excluded. If we were delusional in the past, and that led us to like X, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to like X.

    However, a survival argument can largely explain why we have the moralities we do. We know that non-human primates have instincts for sharing and fairness. Non-human primates also know about cheating, and deterrence of cheating. There are survival advantages to groups that have such awareness.

    I think it’s obvious that human groups are stronger (against other groups, other species, and in the face of natural threats) when they have laws and schemes for justice. So I can’t see a good argument for why we wouldn’t have those things without God.

  30. JAD says:

    SteveK: “The morality and the obligation to care about it is grounded in the necessary nature of God and who we are as created beings.”

    Here is a quote from Darwin that illustrates the problems you encounter when you try to ground morality in nature:

    “If… men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.” (The Descent of Man, p. 73)

    In other words, nothing is really intrinsically right or wrong or good or evil. Morality would be relative to its basic utility and social/environmental context.

    As Michael Ruse says, “Morality… is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends… In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”

    Did you catch that? Ethics and morality is an illusion. Why then should we care about it?

  31. JAD,

    Did you catch that? Ethics and morality is an illusion. Why then should we care about it?

    Sigh. No. Morality is not an illusion. Intrinsic or absolute morality is an illusion.

  32. Crude says:

    Sigh. No. Morality is not an illusion. Intrinsic or absolute morality is an illusion.

    Potato, po-tah-to.

  33. BillT,

    You start out with this promising categorization:

    We were talking about the nature of morality as it relates to the intrinsic value of man and ultimate justice.

    Good, thinks I. BillT is talking about some absolute moral value of man. And BillT is correct, no such value exists in naturalism, as far as we can discern.

    But then…

    And as I and others here have explained, morality is an empty concept outside of the existence of those things.

    No, that’s simply untrue. In practice, no one is kind because being kind is absolutely a good thing. They are kind because it is subjectively (i.e., not absolutely and not intrinsically) a good thing.

    Can you explain why morality matters if man is without intrinsic value.

    Because we care. Caring implies that something matters to us.

    What you are looking for is a means to establish that an act is right or wrong whether or not we care. You correctly conclude that it doesn’t exist under naturalism. But you incorrectly conclude that God’s caring about something establishes an absolute. It doesn’t.

    Can you explain why I should be a humanist if man is without intrinsic value. You claim that in the absence of God we should be moral and humanists. Why?

    Because you care. Of course, if you don’t care, then you don’t feel the moral urge to be a humanist. It’s that simple. Morality = caring.

  34. Crude says:

    No, that’s simply untrue. In practice, no one is kind because being kind is absolutely a good thing. They are kind because it is subjectively (i.e., not absolutely and not intrinsically) a good thing.

    No, that’s simply untrue. In practice, anyone who is kind is kind because they have a glimmer of the absolute, objective good. They are kind because it is objectively (i.e., absolutely and intrinsically) a good thing.

    Because we care. Caring implies that something matters to us.

    What you are looking for is a means to establish that an act is moral. You correctly conclude that it doesn’t exist under naturalism. But you incorrect conclude that God doesn’t establish an absolute. He does.

    Man, this ‘telling people what they really think, and what all people think and do’ thing is a lot of fun. I can see why you do it.

  35. Charlie says:

    Lol. Good times.

    Wait until he tells you how you think as well. Fiesta!

  36. Crude,

    In practice, anyone who is kind is kind because they have a glimmer of the absolute, objective good. They are kind because it is objectively (i.e., absolutely and intrinsically) a good thing.

    Really?!! This is a fascinating psychological model you propose.

    1) A person “senses” in some way that being kind is an absolute, objective good.

    2) Emotionally, the person wants to be absolutely good, no matter what absolute goodness entails.

    3) So they act kindly, and this satisfies their desire.

    Perhaps you can clarify this for me…

    How does the person sense what is right and wrong independent of their subjective feelings towards the act?

    (Of course, you can’t possibly mean that the person subjectively, emotionally feels that it is good to be kind because that would make it plain that you were rationalizing objective morality as an explanation for your subjective oughts.)

  37. Crude says:

    Really?!! This is a fascinating psychological model you propose.

    It’s not a model, Dr. Clueless. It’s in large part mockery.

    How does the person sense what is right and wrong independent of their subjective feelings towards the act?

    How do you objectively sense the keyboard you’re typing on and the monitor in front of you? Or, oh wait, are you going to play the card that you don’t, and all you have is subjective experience, and for all you know you could actually be rasslin’ bears in the Ozarks?

    Objective value can exist, people can detect it, and you can insist that it’s just a delusion on their part. But you can insist the same thing about any of my experiences. Hell, you can deny I have experiences altogether. The fact that I can’t provide an argument that convinces you – correction, gets you to admit – that objective morality exists concerns me about as much as my inability to get a determined solipsist to admit I am conscious.

    Normally I wouldn’t play the psychoanalysis card, but frankly you’re playing it repeatedly (largely because it’s all you got), so hey, fair game. You believe objective morality exists, you sense it, but you’re trying to rationalize it away. And you’re failing to convince even yourself.

    Hey, maybe I can get some Paul Vitz action in on this too.

  38. Tom Gilson says:

    doctor(logic), here’s a scorecard for you.

    False
    Comment 9:

    The problem is that Christians and Muslims (the people Harris is trying to convince) don’t give a &#^$ about measurable consequences and outcomes. Christians and Muslims are not humanists. If all humans burn, they think that’s not a terrible idea.

    Are you going to own up to this absolute perversion of truth or not?

    Comment 22:

    Well, thanks everyone for ignoring my point.

    Comment 35:

    But you incorrectly conclude that God’s caring about something establishes an absolute. It doesn’t.

    Unsupported
    Comment 22:

    However, Christians are rationalizing their humanism as coming from God…. Christians rationalize that their long-term ideals are God-given absolutes. Of course, Christians don’t think it’s rationalization, they think they’re discovering moral truths about the universe and God’s intention for us to live ideal lives. Pretty convenient.

    Crude’s last answer addresses that one.

    Lousy Logic
    Comment 10:

    You can’t use the claim that God will punish me as leverage, because if you do, you would have to admit that personal pleasure/pain is the only motivator, and that sacrificing one’s life of pleasure for a moral principle is unreasonable.

    You ignored it when I pointed out this error earlier. Why would you do that?

    Special Pleading
    Comment 10:

    It’s aesthetically pleasing to you to have an all-powerful father figure who tells you to do what you ideally think you should do. You love it. You think this father figure tells you to dislike homosexuality because you think you should ideally dislike homosexuality, and God is an idealization of your own morality. God hates what you ideally hate, loves what you ideally love.

    But if I proved God didn’t exist, I don’t believe you would all start murdering and raping because I know you hate those things. Likewise, you’d still dislike homosexuality because I know you hate that, too.

    I threw this in because I had already pointed it out to you and you ignored that, too. It’s actually the same issue Crude is addressing with you. Without using the term “special pleading,” he’s showing exactly how you’re doing that.

  39. Tom Gilson says:

    dl,

    You said in comment 31,

    I disagree that they need to be excluded. If we were delusional in the past, and that led us to like X, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to like X.

    Really? For what reason? Psychological? I thought you considered that pretty weak.

    You go on to say that it can lead to survival advantage. That’s even weaker:

    I think it’s obvious that human groups are stronger (against other groups, other species, and in the face of natural threats) when they have laws and schemes for justice. So I can’t see a good argument for why we wouldn’t have those things without God.

    So? Maybe we can have those things without God, but let’s be honest about what they really are.

    Evolution is utterly single-minded (pardon the anthropomorphism; I’m sure you know what I mean). It produces structures, functions, and behaviors that succeed for the reproduction of individuals’ DNA. It doesn’t give a &#^$ (quoting you) for anything else; not even in social groups. The social groups themselves exist only to pass along their members’ DNA. That’s all they’re for. The Churchlands have accurately distilled evolution’s values to the four Fs: Fighting, feeding, fleeing, and reproducing. They are the only purposes your naturalistic “justice,” “altruism,” and “empathy” serve. They are the only purposes that exist.

    You keep asking us to imagine if there were no God: wouldn’t we want to pursue the good anyway? Pursue what? There would be no good without God. There would be the four Fs, if your vision of reality is correct. Evolution doesn’t declare the four Fs good. Humans who declare them good are just blind to what they really represent. Humans who declare altruism or empathy good are blind to what they really represent, too. “Empathy” solely in service of the four Fs is just the four Fs in complex configuration. Same with “justice” and “altruism;” even “rationality” or “intelligence.” They’re all nature’s ways of getting us to make more babies who will make more babies, and they are nothing but that.

    Call it what it is, doctor(logic). Goodness? No. Not on evolutionary premises.

  40. Crude,

    How do you objectively sense the keyboard you’re typing on and the monitor in front of you?

    I can see it, but the difference is that what I see and how I feel about what I see are two different things.

    If I love my keyboard, then I’ll feel positive emotions about my keyboard when I see it. If I own a bright pink keyboard, I’ll probably feel negative emotions when I see my keyboard. If my keyboard is the one I used to break the world speed typing record, I’ll feel positive emotions. If it’s the keyboard left behind when my girlfriend dumped me, not so much.

    Now, according yo your mode of thinking, everything should be taken at face value as objective. So, not only does my keyboard exist, but the likability or goodness of the keyboard must also be objective. So the hot pink keyboard is objectively awful, and the keyboard I used to win the competition is objective super.

    Few people would say that the goodness or badness of my keyboard (as I perceive it in the cases above) was an objective attribute of the keyboard. Rather, they could at best say that there were objective factors in me, my keyboard, and my environment and history that lead me to like it more of less. These factors are not in the keyboard. For example, if I was a chick, I might like the hot pink keyboard instead of disliking it.

    Indeed, by your formula, nothing is subjective. The music and the food you like isn’t subjective either. Nor the movies you like or dislike. If you like a movie, you’re either wrong or right about it.

    I’ll admit that a lot of people intuit that morality is objective, but they have no good evidence for such a belief.

    (Oh, and let’s not forget that the sight of objects is predictive. Morality predicts nothing.)

    Back to your “model”. You claimed that people know intellectually that being kind is objectively good, and then they go through some reasoning, and then they act kindly. So, that was a joke, right?

  41. Tom Gilson says:

    Add this distortion to your scorecard now:

    Now, according yo your mode of thinking, everything should be taken at face value as objective….

    Indeed, by your formula, nothing is subjective.

    Also add this missing-of-the-point:

    Few people would say that the goodness or badness of my keyboard (as I perceive it in the cases above) was an objective attribute of the keyboard.

    You might as well add this falsehood while you’re at it:

    I’ll admit that a lot of people intuit that morality is objective, but they have no good evidence for such a belief.

    There’s lots of evidence for it. Take for example the near-absolutely universal human conviction (apart from recent Western relativists) that moral right and wrong are real.

  42. Tom,

    The problem is that Christians and Muslims (the people Harris is trying to convince) don’t give a &#^$ about measurable consequences and outcomes. Christians and Muslims are not humanists. If all humans burn, they think that’s not a terrible idea.

    IIRC, I’ve been told that on this very blog. I’ve been told that humans deserve death. We don’t deserve anything better than Hell.

    Correct me if I’m wrong.

    But you incorrectly conclude that God’s caring about something establishes an absolute. It doesn’t.

    You say this is unsupported. Do you mean you do not think that God’s caring about something establishes an absolute, or do you mean that I didn’t support my claim?

    If the former, that’s interesting. If the latter, it’s just a matter of fact that God cares are not necessarily the way you think they are. That makes them arbitrary, not absolute.

    Crude’s last answer addresses that one.

    And my last answer addresses Crude. But then you know my position on the objective-subjective distinction. And I know yours: that if it looks objective, it must be.

    You can’t use the claim that God will punish me as leverage, because if you do, you would have to admit that personal pleasure/pain is the only motivator, and that sacrificing one’s life of pleasure for a moral principle is unreasonable.

    You call this special pleading, but I have no idea what you are talking about. I said the above in the context of explaining a person’s motivation for being good. In technical terms, a person who grudgingly acts kindly because he is under threat of torture if he fails to do so, is “motivated” to be good. I don’t think that’s what any of us are really discussing here.

    You claim that we all want to be objectively good, no matter what that goodness entails. I claimed that if God wanted me to torture people, I would rather be objectively evil. That is, I reject your proposition. The point I make above is that reward and punishment should be irrelevant. If I wanted to be objectively good, reward and punishment are irrelevant. If I am imprisoned for doing something I think is good (e.g., volunteering at the soup kitchen), does my imprisonment correct my thinking so that I think helping at soup kitchens is objectively wrong? It does not.

  43. Tom Gilson says:

    Wow. Rarely have I seen such a series of non sequiturs and distortions all lined up one after another.

    No time to expand on that, I’m heading out to a late breakfast with my son.

    That will give me time to think about whether it’s even worth expanding on it. doctor(logic), you don’t give a &#^$ what we say (to quote you again), you’re going to distort it regardless.

  44. I’ll admit that a lot of people intuit that morality is objective, but they have no good evidence for such a belief.

    There’s lots of evidence for it. Take for example the near-absolutely universal human conviction (apart from recent Western relativists) that moral right and wrong are real.

    So, evidence for the belief that morality is objective can be found in… widespread belief that is it objective?

    This is like saying that widespread belief in geocentrism is good evidence for geocentrism.

    I understand this argument, and I think it goes nowhere. Do you have any other arguments?

    I can’t help feeling that your level of argumentation is falling:

    Add this distortion to your scorecard now:

    Now, according yo your mode of thinking, everything should be taken at face value as objective….

    Indeed, by your formula, nothing is subjective.

    Also add this missing-of-the-point:

    Few people would say that the goodness or badness of my keyboard (as I perceive it in the cases above) was an objective attribute of the keyboard.

    Crude said that because I can see my keyboard, I know it’s objective. But morality isn’t like seeing the objective facts. It’s emoting ABOUT the objective facts.

    So why would you accuse me of distortion and missing the point?

    I’m totally on point. In every other situation in which we emote about objective facts, we throw the emotion in the subjective column. But in the case of morality, you say we can’t do that. Why? Your argument so far is that we can’t do it because people normally don’t do it.

  45. Charlie says:

    I can’t help feeling that your level of argumentation is falling

    Ahh, the doctor’s logic now makes sense; keep slapping fouls until the pitcher’s arm gets tired. Must be so lonely in his dugout.

  46. Tom,

    I puzzled by your attempt to find objective goodness in evolution. Even if the four F’s were the “values” of evolution (I’m not sure evolution has values at all), this doesn’t stop evolution from creating beings that do have values. I think you can agree that, if evolution works (which you doubt, but go with me here), evolution can make us have values, but our values are historically arbitrary. Had history taken a different turn, maybe we would have had different values. And, in that sense, our values are a historical accident of living in groups of a certain size.

    For example, if we had evolved to live in pair groups, we might have had much stronger family values, but weaker links to non-family members. Or, if we had evolved in larger groups, we might have weaker family bonds. If we had evolved from bonobos, we’d have sex all the time and with everybody.

    The values we actually have are derived from living life in groups of around 150. Kind of arbitrary. But they’re still values. What more do you want?

  47. “Are you saying that in such a universe, you don’t want to be KIND or FAIR? That you don’t want to create what JUSTICE you can? That if some people GET AWAY with MURDER, we OUGHT NOT try to establish JUSTICE for the murderers we do catch?”

    Doctor L the huge flaw to your argument is that you are inherently appealing to concepts of justice, fairness and morality that have been shaped by religion for centuries (I’ve taken the liberty of capitalizing all the appeals ). They are woven so deep into our cultural consciousness that you can appeal to them as a background human fact. I am not talking about the individual tenets of religious morality but the overriding concepts themselves.

    What is certain is that if we remove our cultural history we would not come to the same present and that includes our sense of fairness, justice or morality. Harris in a lecture he gave on TED falls into the same self hypnotic state of not seeing the base of the morality people appeal to (regardless of the differences on individual tents) . Every other paragraph from that lecture appealed to the audiences sense of cultural fairness and purpose that our culture came to from a religious perspective if even now some want to claim that it didn’t.

    You grew up in a world full of people who believed in God, with laws derived from a mosaic base. Its easy to claim that You can extract the past from where we are now but its illogical.

    Its like standing in a boat claiming you can float without the culture that made it. the foundation that you constantly appeal to is in fact based on a cultural acceptance that has roots in religion.

    The best we can do is look at cultures that threw off their historical background long enough to see how it affected their thought and society. That record has not been pretty and does not argue for all humans being naturally humanitarian, caring about fairness, kindness or about justice to the individual. With the failure of those tests your argument is flat. Making the argument in a world that has religious concepts of fairness and justice so deeply woven into its fabric is cheating and not intellectually sound.

  48. “IIRC, I’ve been told that on this very blog. I’ve been told that humans deserve death. We don’t deserve anything better than Hell.

    Correct me if I’m wrong.”

    Fine. You are wrong.

    From the perspective of actions and result my son would deserve to die if he ran a series of red lights driving at 140 miles per hour. From the perspective of this father he deserves to live because of the love I have for him.

    Its no different with God perfectly illustrated in Christian thought by the cross of Christ. You just don’t understand the perspective differences being discussed when Christians are talking about that subject.

  49. “Had history taken a different turn, maybe we would have had different values. And, in that sense, our values are a historical accident of living in groups of a certain size.”

    I’m sorry to post so often in succession but this is patent nonsense. Values are a product of thought that is learned. some tendencies may be inherited but thoughts are not genetically passed on only capabilities. I have met sociopaths that have no sense of morality and they all learned it because it was not fused into their DNA regardless of the size of their ancestral groups.

  50. JAD says:

    For sake of argument let’s concede Dr. “logics” point. That you can have morality without moral absolutes.

    Did the Nazi’s have a moral/ethical system? Peter Haas argues that they did.

    “My primary claim will be that what the Nazis perpetrated can in fact be described as an ethic… To say Nazi collaborators had no ethic simply will not do. Nor do I think it is adequate to say that it is adequate to say that perpetrators knew that what they were doing was evil but chose to do what they did anyway.”

    In other words, Haas argues that the Nazi’s did not think of themselves as evil and had a fairly well developed system of ethics and morality based on their beliefs. But if there are no moral absolutes how can we say what the Nazi’s did was wrong or evil? In their minds, as they rationalized it, it certainly served a good purpose in their society.

    Did the Nazi’s believe in following their ethic that there were no moral absolutes? It is hard to argue that they did. They believed fanatically in what they were doing was right, not sort of right.

    So a so-called moral system based on no absolutes simply collapses. We have no way of evaluating what is right or wrong, or good and evil. What good is a moral belief system that cannot do any of those things?

  51. Tom Gilson says:

    What more do I want? How about you exhibiting some values yourself? DL, do you care even a little bit about all your distortions and perversions, and the other screwing around you’re doing with how you’re representing Christian beliefs?

  52. JAD says:

    Just as a followup, here is an interesting discussion about Nazi ethics from the chapter six of The making of the holocaust: ideology and ethics in the systems perspective, by André Mineau. It is a preview, so some of the material is skipped (but hey, it is free). It’s still a very substantive discussion.
    http://books.google.com/books?id=BKmaV6nszw8C&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=nazi+ethics&source=bl&ots=WXGBw87TRY&sig=gDU5EZd8SOYmEXVZp4TkiF2tInU&hl=en&ei=C_zCTMKBGoSglAeRyK0H&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=nazi%20ethics&f=false

  53. Charlie says:

    Hitler, of course, was a humanist. He was intending to raise the wellbeing of the whole of humanity by eliminating the subhumans and having the ubermensch rule.

  54. JAD says:

    And, of course if there are no moral absolutes who is to say that he could not have been right? But wait the Nazi’s based their own moral system on what they believed were moral absolutes, but if there are no absolutes then they couldn’t be right… well they couldn’t be wrong either… I’m confused. Someone help me out.

  55. JAD,

    I think the Nazis did have an ethical system, although it wasn’t very coherent. And I think they were moral realists, as you say.

    You then ask:

    So a so called moral system based on no absolutes simply collapses. We have no way of evaluating what is right or wrong, or good and evil. What good is a moral belief system that cannot do any of those things?

    We do have a way of evaluating them. Just like we have a way of evaluating a sandwich: How does it taste?

    If you mean that, under moral subjectivism, there’s no objective, absolute right and wrong, then you correctly understand moral subjectivism. But that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as moral taste.

    Under moral subjectivism, “Nazism is wrong” reduces to something like “I find Nazism personally offensive” or “Nazism offends my personal ideals for living a good life” or “In my ideal world, no one would be offensive by being a Nazi” or “Nazism? Them’s fightin’ words!”.

    In my experience, moral realists find this approach terrifying. Maybe they fear that if there’s no objective reason to find Nazism offensive, they’ll actually start to like it.

    Moral realists are also confused about how a moral debate works. They think that moral persuasion works by deductive argument. It doesn’t. Moral arguments are emotional appeals that are later rationalized in a deductive framework. Novels and films don’t change moral opinions by deductive argument. It makes people empathize with a wider group of people.

    Look, you and I both hate the Nazi ethic, but suppose our friend Adolf likes it. I might be able to show Adolf that his means don’t best achieve his ends, and thereby turn him away from Nazism. However, if I can’t do that, we’ll either have to sign a treaty with Adolf or go to war.

    You take a different approach. In order to justify your belief that Adolf is wrong, you have to rationalize that Nazism is absolutely evil. And, if it were possible to show that Nazism were absolutely evil, then you could deductively argue to Adolf that your moral position was objectively correct. However, Adolf, being a moral realist, is doing the same thing, only in his objectivist ethics, Nazism is absolutely good. Since there’s no basis for the objectivity of morality apart from our feelings, you have no chance of making an objective case to Adolf (nor he to you).

    So, you revert to the same tactics as me. You make democracy look more appealing to Adolf’s own values, or else you sign a treaty or go to war.

  56. Tom Gilson says:

    dl, do you care even a little bit about all your distortions and perversions of your interlocutors’ positions? You’re ignoring the question. Not very honorable if you ask me. Certainly no example of making your points in good faith. Pretty slimy, in fact. Would you care to man up and have a real discussion with us? Or will you keep on contesting your fantasy version of our position?

  57. Tom, (and Michael Anthony)

    I’ve been told by commentators on this blog that the Holocaust was the best thing God could have allowed to happen, that we’re all evil, that we all deserve to burn in Hell, and that we can’t help ourselves. Forgive me if I’m missing the humanism in this picture.

    Then you get interesting statements like Michael Anthony’s above:

    From the perspective of actions and result my son would deserve to die if he ran a series of red lights driving at 140 miles per hour. From the perspective of this father he deserves to live because of the love I have for him.

    Is MA equivocating when he uses the word “deserve” in two different ways? Or does he mean it in the same sense?

    In the first sense, deserve might mean “can be expected based on probability”. The second sense seems to mean “a parent-preferred outcome”.

    If we took that approach, then we would expect some sort of universalism. What? No? Oh, it all makes soooo much sense.

  58. Charlie says:

    DL is wrong, as always, whenever he discusses morality because he ignores any facts that he didn’t cook up in his own head to justify his atheism.
    He is confusing the common sales technique of appealing to emotions with the establishment of right and wrong. Cars, iPods, nifty backpacks, etc, can be sold by appeal to emotion but the desire does not make the buyer need that item. He only feels he needs it because he has been emotionally targeted. It does not make the need true.
    Neither does sympathy raised by media make the feeling morally normative.

    As for emotions, I was repulsed by abortion when I did not find it morally wrong.
    And, on the flipside, I am emotionally attracted to many things which are morally wrong.
    Feelings do not shape morality or construct a moral system. Feelings can be indicative to a degree, but they must be trained. As is the case with Kevin’s stages of moral maturity, the training, if it is to allow us to feel correctly about moral issues, requires that there be moral absolutes.
    This has been spelled out many times for DL, and linked above, but DL doesn’t ever seem to care.

  59. Tom,

    This discussion is about moral realism. If you have proof of moral realism, make it. If you can support your belief that God’s desires aren’t arbitrary, support it.

    If you had reasons to support moral realism beyond the mere fact that people believe in moral realism, I would have expected to see them by now.

    Frankly, I’m not the one being evasive. You’re not being specific about what I’m distorting, and you’re not correcting me. To his credit, MA tried to do so, but I’m not seeing his point at all.

  60. Charlie says:

    I’ve been told by commentators on this blog that the Holocaust was the best thing God could have allowed to happen,

    Link, please?

  61. Charlie,

    Ooh! Let’s talk about these:

    As for emotions, I was repulsed by abortion when I did not find it morally wrong.
    And, on the flipside, I am emotionally attracted to many things which are morally wrong.

    I’ll give you an example. Suppose I’m hanging out, and I find I have the opportunity to cheat on my partner. I feel an immediate desire to have sex with this new person, but I feel conflicting emotions. I know how my partner would feel if I was found out. I know that if my parents were watching me, they would be disappointed, and I feel the embarrassment, even though I am certain they cannot actually see me. I also feel fear stemming from the inherent risks of an affair.

    The conflict is between immediate desires for sex, immediate feelings of embarrassment, fear, long term desires for a good life, and long term desires not to have missed out in life, etc. This is a pretty realistic model of human psychology.

    I want to understand how your moral feelings differ from the picture I have just painted. The picture you suggest is one in which you don’t have a conflict between multiple emotions per se. You suggest instead that you have a conflict between hot emotion and abstract moral knowledge, and somehow, the abstract moral knowledge wins out. Enquiring minds want to know!

    And, let’s look at the abortion example, too. When you say you found abortion repulsive, but you weren’t against it, what do you mean? Do you mean that you had no emotional conflict as far as abortion was concerned, but you had abstract reasons why you thought abortion was absolutely a woman’s right?

  62. Charlie,

    You don’t have the link?!! I’m disappointed in you!

  63. Tom Gilson says:

    dl, I have offered evidence for moral realism. You have responded with gross distortions of our position. If comment 13 wasn’t specific enough for you, then what about comment 25? What about number 40 or number 43?

    If my responses aren’t specific enough for you, how about Charlie’s? See here or here.

    JAD has been involved, too. He pointed out some of your distortions early on, and followed it up here.

    But wait, there’s more. BillT was quite specific about your mischaracterizing what he said. Twice, actually.

    Did I forget anyone? Oh yes, SteveK. Not to mention Michael Anthony.

    What all twelve of these comments—30% of the comments since you first weighed in here, not counting your own—have in common is this: all of them point out your mischaracterizing something of our position. I did not include comments that merely disagreed with your position or argued against you; I only included ones in which we put you on notice that you were misrepresenting what you claimed to be arguing against.

    Quit evading the issue: the issue of your own dishonesty in argumentation.

  64. “Is MA equivocating when he uses the word “deserve” in two different ways? Or does he mean it in the same sense?”

    Its used in the same exact sense. If he should drive like that with no regard to ending the lives of others then in a logical construct it can be said that if he lost his own life it was deserved. Is that all that he is? No so on another level I see the qualities in which he deserves to live. They are both right although the first would be painful for me to accept but logically I would have no choice to accept the point. From God’s perspective although if we reject his life the logical deserved consequence should be the removal of this life he made us, loved us and he sees himself in us. He finds value to the point of canceling what we deserve by paying the punishment on the cross. Its then our call to decide whether we accept the remedy or not.

    I’m not sure what is being pursued with this line of reasoning. Is this the usual denial of God based on incredulity? The very popular – unscientific approach against God and religious morality based on being horrified by him having a different opinion of our behavior than we do?

    But to your point of outrage – you can’t take death and Hell with out balancing it with the extreme measures Christianity teaches that God took for us to avoid that consequence. Not unless you insist on being biased and illogical. It provides context but you only want to take it out of such.

  65. Tom Gilson says:

    Let me add this, dl: you have charged me with not proving my position. Proof is not my goal. I know that’s out of reach. I’m seeking to give strong supporting evidence instead. I have put forward evidence, and you could evaluate whether it was strong or not. What you have done instead has been to argue against that which I have not said and do not believe. You have done the same with others here. Worse than that, you have imputed beliefs to us falsely, and you have ignored virtually all our statements of correction. What that tells me is you don’t mind being dishonest—persisting in lies about us.

    I have no interest in arguing my point with someone who is going to answer, “But what you really believe is this other thing,” and who persists in repeating lies about me.

  66. MA,

    The very popular – unscientific approach against God and religious morality based on being horrified by him having a different opinion of our behavior than we do?

    Do you have a different opinion of our behavior than God does?

    Or does God’s opinion feel right to you?

  67. Tom,

    I went back through your links, and, yes, I find plenty of denials of my characterization of Christian belief. You also ask me several times if I’m interested in hearing your beliefs rather than just your denials of what I think your beliefs are.

    You’re basically objecting to three assertions:
    1) that Christianity isn’t humanist, and that Christians are okay if humanity burns.
    2) That Christians are rationalizing when they claim morality is absolute.
    3) That God establishes moral absolutes merely by caring about them.

    What do Christians really believe?

    I think Christianity is highly confused and incoherent. I’ll bet you think the same is true of atheism, but never mind that.

    You want to brush aside my characterizations of Christianity, as if I should know exactly what TEH CHRISTIANITY really is. But if Christianity is coherent, it is really hard to understand.

    MA provides a great example:

    The very popular – unscientific approach against God and religious morality based on being horrified by him having a different opinion of our behavior than we do?

    So, is MA horrified, or not?

    If MA isn’t horrified, and if MA is a humanist, then Christianity is humanist, too! Hooray!

    But if we’re all, upon reflection, hunky dory with Christian morality, then it sure looks as if the moral reality you’re trying to ground is a rationalization for our baseline humanist moral tastes.

    The other possibility is that MA remains truly horrified by the subjective (to MA) injustice of God’s system.

    If MA is a humanist and he concedes that God is absolutely right, then Christianity isn’t humanist, after all.

    On the other hand, maybe MA isn’t a humanist, but God is, and that’s why God’s plan is horrifying to MA. But then the question is, on what grounds should MA commit himself to God’s plan? God can make life miserable for MA, and maybe that is reason enough. Or maybe MA thinks we ought to commit ourselves to whatever God wants, even if it horrifies us (which isn’t a humanist position either).

    But if we take this latter position, an evil God could do exactly the same thing to a humanist human. Not that you ever like to consider that simple thought experiment.

    If we take the position that humanism is absolutely right, then we run afoul of Euthyphro.

    Finally, maybe you can give a short paragraph as an answer to why God let the Holocaust happen. I mean, you think God intervenes all over the place, right? There’s divine providence? IIRC, the answer I previously was that God acted optimally.

    If you think the Christian position should be clear to me (or anyone), think again.

  68. Doctor logic let me try in a nutshell form to explain my point since you say you didn’t get it.

    in the post where you asked about still pursuing kindness and justice if God didn’t exist you are appealing to the values of kindness and justice our culture holds as a result of our history. You appeal to it almost as a priori but it is only so (or nearly so) because like it or not culturally its derived from centuries long involvement with religion

    You and Harris are trying to build a rational for a nontheistic morality on the back of an existing cultural morality while playing blind as to where the building blocks you want to assemble came from.

    Its a lot like saying we individually don’t need laws anymore because we are civilized without understanding how various laws shaped our behavior to make us civilized.

    If you want to do something real then start from scratch. Construct the concept of fairness from the ground up. Brick by brick from the very beginning of the concept of justice, fairness or kindness. Be advised that in every attempt I have seen it is easy to hit over each brick put up and to do so on purely rational grounds. The history of our world proves morality has been derived from religious concepts. it is your theory that it can be done without it. The burden of proof is on you. Get to proving it not merely arguing for it as you and Harris do.

  69. Charlie says:

    Hi DL

    Enquiring minds want to know!

    Of course they do.

    I’ll give you an example. Suppose I’m hanging out, and I find I have the opportunity to cheat on my partner. I feel an immediate desire to have sex with this new person, but I feel conflicting emotions. I know how my partner would feel if I was found out. I know that if my parents were watching me, they would be disappointed, and I feel the embarrassment, even though I am certain they cannot actually see me. I also feel fear stemming from the inherent risks of an affair.

    Chump change. No partner, no embarrassment (approving parents) and no risks. Throw in an approving peer group which heaps scorn on the abstinent.

    You suggest instead that you have a conflict between hot emotion and abstract moral knowledge, and somehow, the abstract moral knowledge wins out.

    Not just hot emotion but nice cool ones as well. All this and yet it is wrong. And until the subject has trained himself to see it from God’s point of view and to feel as God wants him to he will have no compunction. It is wrong even if the emotions say it is good, and the wrongness can be learned and the emotions will follow.
    Ooh.

    Do you mean that you had no emotional conflict as far as abortion was concerned, but you had abstract reasons why you thought abortion was absolutely a woman’s right?

    I mean when I thought about abortion it made me sad and thoughts about the procedure repulsed me but I never questioned whether my dear friends ought to have abortions. We were raised to think that it was not a moral crime and that the baby was unimportant. Nonetheless, my emotions were yet to be convinced.

    Your position is simplistic and trying to make it complex by adding this hidden emotion against that one does nothing for it. It’s like when you struggled so hard to make “predictive” a part of “knowledge” that you would count it if you could hide it in the sentence “I predict that I am right about this”. Of course, you only used this if it was not knowledge of God that was predictive. What you’re going to have to do now is start in with your moral calculus, saying that my emotions tell me this, but if I think about this and that, look way down the road, impart future consequence, delay gratification, etc., I will feel differently. of course, then you will be substituting reason for feeling and calling them the same thing so that you can try to carry your point. You will say that if I abstain I am “feeling” that I should abstain, which is trivially true; we all do what we want when we want it. In other words, we always do what we feel, if this is how feeling comes to be defined. And when it does, according to the model you are trying to scrape together this time around, we are always moral no matter what we do.

    Let me give you other ones that I have before. My emotions are in uproar when I speak publicly. But I don’t think it is bad for me to speak publicly, nor for anyone else to. My body rejects eating liver and sea food by violently reacting against its ingestion. But that does not make eating these morally wrong for me or anyone else. When my friend told me about her C-section my abdomen contracted in reaction to my negative emotion. But C-sections are not wrong.
    Until/unless the emotions are properly trained to apprehend the good and the bad they are merely and not perfectly indicative, not are not normative. Feelings are part of our fallen nature and as such have to be aligned with rationale and will agree when enough moral information is assimilated. An integral piece of that information is the fact that there is a God who loves you and knows what is best for you and has revealed that to you. This God has shown us what love is and our duty is to love Him back. And when you love Him back you do what He says is right, realizing that as Creator and sustainer of the cosmos and lover of your soul what He says is right IS right.

    I won’t comment on your making a charge without a link just yet because maybe you have retrieved it while I was typing this.
    Disappointed? Of course you are. When you aren’t flaming out you are perpetually disappointed that Christians even exist, let alone refute your claims.

  70. JAD says:

    Tom to Dr. “logic“:
    “Let me add this, dl: you have charged me with not proving my position. Proof is not my goal. I know that’s out of reach. I’m seeking to give strong supporting evidence instead. I have put forward evidence, and you could evaluate whether it was strong or not.”

    I’m not quite sure that I completely understand what Tom is referring to here, but let me give you my take.

    In the moral realm I think there are examples of many things that are absolutely evil: German soldiers machine gunning innocent men, women and children because they happen to be Jewish. Euthanizing people who are considered physically or mentally unfit. Euthanizing homosexuals because of their sexual orientation. Building then using concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria in order to systematically murder millions of innocent people– again, primarily because they happen to be Jewish. Those kind of acts are absolutely objectively evil. That is something that I am absolutely sure of, not because I feel that way, not because I’ve been told to believe that way, but because I am person who has a moral nature–a conscience. I don’t need any more proof than that. (Is that what you call a moral realist position?)

    How is it possible to even have any kind of rational discourse with someone who does not comprehend that? Furthermore, the problem is not my moral education, my understanding or lack of understanding. I am just thinking as a human being.

    By the way, many other people besides Christians agree with me here. As a matter of fact I would argue the vast majority of human beings agree with me here. However, I am not arguing that it is a matter of having any kind consensus, rather it is because that is the way human beings have been “wired” to believe morally.

  71. “Finally, maybe you can give a short paragraph as an answer to why God let the Holocaust happen. I mean, you think God intervenes all over the place, right?

    Wrong. Tom is right. Your understanding of Christianity is kind of infantile and his premise seems about right that you want it to be that way for a reason (emotional as I indicated earlier).

    Christianity does not teach that God intervenes “all over the place”. In fact it indicates that if he did the world would end as you know it. You need to get a primer or something providence is not synonymous with intervention in fact its primary application is to situations where there is no miraculous intervention.

    the holocaust is not even a difficult question. It was not God that inspired Hitler and the history of who and what influenced him is quite clear.

    this “God allowed” indictment against God is always weak.

    A)Its based on a flawed idea that God is the father for all people at all times and assumes responsibility for actions and consequences over the whole human race on that basis.

    Thats actually an anti- christian position.

    B) It is mostly argued by people who see death with finality and totally illogically draws conclusions on that basis even within a context of discussing religion that holds to nowhere near the finality of death or suffering that the (mostly) atheist does. its a rather sloppy anti-intellectual assessment of a world view based on an opposing worldview starting point.

    C) Its made most often by people who would argue for the intervention of God but who cry foul at his rule.

    I could go on at length debunking your premises but comments were not meant to be post length (and i’ve abused that several times) So I will stop.

    Besides its a sure sign of futility when in a conversation one party starts drawing conclusions based on what People (MA) “might think” instead of asking. At that point its no longer intellectually honest and the line has to be drawn and the full stop added.

  72. Tom Gilson says:

    Michael, your 8:52 comment was spot-on and brilliant. I would amend just one line slightly:

    The history of our world proves morality has been derived from religious concepts.

    I would say instead that the history of our world shows that moral advance (and the resulting moral knowledge) has been directed and motivated by religious concepts, specifically (for the most part) Judeo-Christianity. Morality is in God himself.

    Otherwise, I agree with your challenge to dl, and I would be most interested to see him try to fulfill it.

  73. SteveK says:

    DL,
    Your comment #10 accused me of being inconsistent or maybe even hypocritical. I took the time to explain why that is not the case in comments #24 and #27 and you chose to ignore those comments for reasons unknown.

    Do you have a rejoinder, or are you satisfied that the thinking in #24 and #27 is sound and that you are clearly wrong?

  74. MA,

    In your 8:52pm comment, you refer to my assertion that if we dispense with moral realism, we would maintain our current emotional responses to moral situations, and we would still want to be fair, kind, etc.

    Your criticism seems to be that we only have our emotional responses because of a long history of (Christian) moral realism.

    Well, I certainly agree that a lot of our responses are shaped by our culture. However, I don’t think the arrow of causation points in the direction you think it does. You think that religion was the driving force behind moral culture, but it seems much more plausible that it was the other way around.

    Let’s imagine a counterfactual history in which Christianity’s moral realism has been responsible for all of our moral values. We should expect to see few, if any, civilizations predating Christianity (or outside its sphere of influence) that had sufficient morality to exist at all, and all of them that did exist would be based on moral relativism in some form. We would expect that the cognitive appreciation of Christianity would radically transform the world overnight, as Christ’s message of moral realism and humanism is passed from one town to the next.

    Of course, we know this didn’t happen. I’m not aware of any cultures that are/were known to be morally relativistic, though there were cultures that were more or less liberal, to be sure. Also, the culture of Christianity has advanced roughly at the pace of standard of living. When you have a low life expectancy, you take more risks, and you treat life as if it is less valuable. That is, the progress of morality is tied more closely to sociological factors, like anticipated lifespan.

    So, I dispute your claim that religion is responsible for our moral frameworks.

  75. MA,

    You then put up this challenge:

    Construct the concept of fairness from the ground up. Brick by brick from the very beginning of the concept of justice, fairness or kindness.

    I’m not exactly sure what you mean for me to construct, but I infer from the point you made earlier in that comment that you’re wondering where fairness would come from if not from religion. Of course, from my perspective, religion adopted fairness from our primate ancestors. Religion didn’t invent it.

    So where did fairness come from?

    Apparently, other primates also have it:
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030918092951.htm

    Suppose you have two groups of primates. One respects fairness, the other doesn’t. The group that fails to respect fairness fails to benefit from being in a group. They fail to cooperate and may fare worse than primates that don’t live in groups. Meanwhile, the group that has a sense of fairness succeeds in cooperation, division of labor, etc. Certainly, when it comes to group selection, the group respecting fairness (within the group) is more competitive.

    If we inherited an emotional sense of fairness from our ancestors, humans can be expected to have a strong bias towards fairness to people within our peer group. What has happened over the centuries is that the definition of our peer groups has been getting broader. Where once it contained blood relatives and people of identical culture, now it includes people of different races & cultures people with disabilities, people of other genders, and people with different sexual orientations.

    Your claim is that if we take away religion, everything will fall apart, I think that’s nonsense. Religion has been extremely divisive in history, emphasizing differences in beliefs or cultures, and spending much of its time demarcating the in-group versus the out-group. At the same time, some religious devotees have gone out of their way to emphasize that we’re all one big family. On balance, I think religion has helped less than it has hurt.

    Of course, none of this makes fairness absolutely a good thing. But it does mean that if you need not be concerned about fairness fading away with belief in religious or philosophical myths. Fairness is in our genes, and it flourishes as we become more inclusive, not because we’re more religious.

  76. Everyone,

    MA says:

    Christianity does not teach that God intervenes “all over the place”. In fact it indicates that if he did the world would end as you know it. You need to get a primer or something providence is not synonymous with intervention in fact its primary application is to situations where there is no miraculous intervention.

    Do you all agree? Before agreeing, let’s be more specific…

    Does God intervene on a daily basis? When one person in 100 survives a plane crash, people are quick to give God credit. Are they wrong? Did God intervene to save that person?

    Or, would you say that God hasn’t intervened since the Jesus ascended?

  77. SteveK,

    You asked about your responses in #24 and #27.

    I just don’t see that you’ve given an answer to my query in #24. You’re restating the fact that your desires would lack an objective basis. But not everything you do requires an objective basis. The food you eat and the music you listen to lacks an objective basis. There may be objective reasons why you like the music you like, but those reasons explain your liking the music, They don’t establish the music as objectively better than other forms. Yet you listen to that music instead of music you subjectively dislike.

    And if I could prove to you that Klingon opera was objectively best, that wouldn’t make you want to listen to it.

    I’m asking about your motivations for doing what you do. Motivations don’t derive from objective oughts. I would not be motivated to do things because they’re objectively right, but by my emotions and my preferences for the consequences.

    I’m kind, but not because I think kindness is objectively right. I’m kind because it has its own emotional rewards. And if it has its own emotional rewards, I (nor anyone else) need(s) no illusion of objectivity. Tell me kindness is evil, and I’d prefer to be objectively evil.

    In #27 you say:

    If some being was created for an intended purpose, and that purpose involved obligation to certain realities that could not be otherwise, would that created being be obligated to its intended purpose under any and all possible circumstances?

    You say yes. I just don’t see the logic at all. If I build a sentient robot to murder people, and the robot disobeys me, we wouldn’t say the robot was wrong. It failed to do what I intended it to, but failing to do what one’s creator wants is not always a moral failure.

    You can theorize that God is a special case. However, I see no basis for God to prefer one morality more than another. If I understand you, you think that any god-like being would necessarily have Christian morality. I think that’s untrue. An evil god with a “problem of good” is just as plausible as a good god with a “problem of evil”.

  78. Tom Gilson says:

    Doctor(logic),

    Just a quick answer since I have a busy morning ahead.

    1. I have come to dislike the word “intervene” for what God does providentially or miraculously in the world today. Not enough time now to explain why; but if what Michael was referring to was miracles or other turnings away from the normal course of natural events, I think he was generally correct. I have written about that in more detail. God still does miracles but they are not frequent.

    2. See Ed Feser on the “problem of good.”

    3. Christians do not believe one has to have a belief in God to be moral. See Romans 3.

    4. Full knowledge of God’s moral purposes does come from God’s revelation, however.

    You asked, “What do Christians believe?” I’m curious—have you read any of the New Testament, especially the Gospels (first four books)? I’m willing to work this answer with you, but I thought that would be a good place to start.

  79. Tom Gilson says:

    Here’s a different kind of question for you, doctor(logic). What do you consider to be civilization’s three most significant moral advances between the time of Christ and about 1960? I’m not including the last 50 years because we’re in a period of moral revolution, and we do not have the benefit of history to judge whether recent moral shifts are advances or not.

  80. “Your criticism seems to be that we only have our emotional responses because of a long history of (Christian) moral realism.”

    I am limited by needing to get to work but I wanted to note your attempt at a strawman. I said nothing about my point being based on just Christianity. I point blanks said religion. If you can show me anywhere in human culture that predates religion then you would have a point but since you can’t I’m sorry but your entire counter argument can be dispensed with.

    Short and sweet . you will need to start over again. this might confuse you but even Christianity doesn’t start with Christianity.

  81. “Does God intervene on a daily basis? When one person in 100 survives a plane crash, people are quick to give God credit. Are they wrong? Did God intervene to save that person?”

    again quickly

    You are confused with your concept of intervention is all. For you the world stands separate from God and he has to intervene to achieve his will. In a christian world view God has set up a world where his will can and is achieved. Sometimes that will is for you to have your will (hyper Calvinists might disagree). The 100 surviving in the plane crash CAN thank God that they were providential seated to continue on this planet but as Jesus taught those who died need be no more sinful. The intervention if there really is one (and their might be from time to time but not “all over the place”) can be very light.

    Providence most of the time means that God uses our choices and circumstances to get us to where he wants us to be. You seem to think God is or was obligated to intervene in the Holocaust. God’s point is that the world is in rebellion against him and cannot/won’t generally call him Father (As you yourself illustrate) so why should you demand protection from who you deny is your protector? This usually comes from some unspoken theology that God is obligated to you or the Human race despite anything else whereas you should have no obligation to Him – the colloquial “Sugar daddy” God.

    For those that do accept Him AND his protection he has two choices. He can intervene or as I like a father might do just decide to take his children out of the bad neighborhood (world) altogether which you see as the finality of death and we don’t.

    Thing is that most christians believe that God will indeed put and end to all the things you think are atrocious but you will complain at that because his list of whats atrocious is a bit longer than yours and you won’t like how firmly he eradicates it. The flip side of this common atheist argument is complaining about parts in the Bible that shows him doing just that.

  82. Tom,

    A few comments.

    1) In your Breakpoint article, I can’t believe you talk about signal-to-noise!!!! I know, it’s another debate, but you don’t seem to understand it at all. Yes, if there’s noise you cannot see a signal. If there’s nothing but noise, then we would be unable to see anything. If gravity was chaotic, we might not even know gravity existed. That’s cool. But the problem is that Christian miracles don’t exceed the noise of nature. And every attempt to suppress the noise by doing a scientific analysis OF THE NOISE, you rule as foul because God won’t be part of an experiment. So you end up with a situation in which people can only believe in God when they specifically ignore S/N ratio.

    1A) So, your opinion of interventions or miracles is that they don’t have significant shifts on, say, geopolitics? So, for example, communism was defeated (if it was) by human actions? And the rise of the Third Reich was not the kind of thing God intervenes to stop?

    2) Feser’s position is based on Thomism. And Feser uses this Medieval philosophy to argue that an evil god is logically impossible. Are you a Thomist like Holopupenko?

    Feser says that theistic personalism is more vulnerable to Law’s attack. But we should know that you reject theistic personalism in favor of Thomism?

    3) Um..

    Christians do not believe one has to have a belief in God to be moral. See Romans 3.

    Sure, but this is a defensive argument. You’re saying that the absence of the ideal historical picture of Christianity transforming the world is not logically refuted by the actual picture of morality evolving based on sociological factors.

    4)

    What do you consider to be civilization’s three most significant moral advances between the time of Christ and about 1960? I’m not including the last 50 years because we’re in a period of moral revolution, and we do not have the benefit of history to judge whether recent moral shifts are advances or not.

    I’m sorry, how long do we need? Maybe 100 years isn’t enough? How would we even judge if something was an advance?

    I would say equal rights for women, although that may not fall outside your 50 year boundary. Not sure if democracy counts since it could be said to have been invented by the Greeks. Racial equality.

    (I know what your next move is, but I’ll let you make it anyway)

  83. Michael,

    In a christian world view God has set up a world where his will can and is achieved.

    So the Holocaust is God’s will? It was well deserved? It was the proper thing?

    I really don’t see how you’re going to make this look good.

    If my kids are rebellious, I don’t leave them to their own devices. If one kid tortures another, I intervene to stop it, even if both kids are rebels. I do this because I love them. Their rejection of me doesn’t alter the love. But what you are talking about isn’t love. I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t love.

    In fact, if I see adults fighting, and I love them, I will also try to intervene to stop it.

    So, when you use the term love, you must mean something different than the usual use of the term.

    I said nothing about my point being based on just Christianity. I point blanks said religion. If you can show me anywhere in human culture that predates religion then you would have a point but since you can’t I’m sorry but your entire counter argument can be dispensed with.

    No, I think my argument sketches out about the same either way. You’re trying to argue that the values that got us where we are exist because of religion. But if we’ve had religion since prehistory, why do we just now have democracy? Why is it only now that women can own property? That we have welfare? That we have racial equality?

    If anything we see modern morality emerge as the boot of religion comes off our necks in public life. Religion spends much of its time emphasizing difference, and it’s divisive for that reason. But even these negative effects of religion aren’t the major factor in moral change. Sociological factors like urban living and global communications seem to be much greater drivers of moral change. These sociological factors cause us to increase the size of our perceived in-group.

    You might say that we don’t have a good control scenario, i.e., a group of humans raised in the absence of the influence of religion. That’s true, but we can say that there is apparent moral progress in some places and not others, and that often, the more religion there is, the less morality there is. That is religion in its generic form is not well correlated with morality.

    But if you try to step back and say “Well, it’s not just religion, but the KIND of religion…” then you’re returning to the argument that it’s Christianity in particular which is responsible for moral advance (which is the argument that your comment above is excluding).

  84. “So the Holocaust is God’s will? It was well deserved? It was the proper thing?”

    Asked and answered. It was clearly demonic but you are just ignoring that that was already said. God’s will as I again also said is that we have free will that comes with its collective consequences.

    “I really don’t see how you’re going to make this look good.”

    We’ve established that you do not see it so the observation is somewhat redundant. Quite often atheists make the mistake of believing and arguing like their viewpoint is authoritative but it is merely a provably minority viewpoint.

    “If my kids are rebellious, I don’t leave them to their own devices.’

    Actually thats spoken like a man that does not have children or never really thought through parenthood. There are a number of situation when you HAVE to let your children make their own choices and deal with their own consequences besides which again I’ve made this clear – you are assuming your own theology that all human beings have a parent child relationship with God. If tomorrow I should create life in a lab it does not logically follow that it takes the same position as my son I mentioned earlier. I’ve told you clearly this is anti-christian viewpoint. I have no obligation to answer your theology you do.

    Anyone that knows a lick about parenthood can understand why an adopted child is every much a son or a daughter of the person that raised them. That is distinct from who was biologically involved in their creation. parenthood is established by relationship but you are begging for it to be otherwise so that you can hold God responsible for parental duties without parental relationship.

    Its a miss as wide as a mile.

  85. “No, I think my argument sketches out about the same either way. You’re trying to argue that the values that got us where we are exist because of religion. But if we’ve had religion since prehistory, why do we just now have democracy? Why is it only now that women can own property? That we have welfare? That we have racial equality?”

    You are kidding right? You have just demonstrated such a remarkable ignorance of world history there doesn’t seem to be much point in continuing a debate until you get some idea of what you are talking about. You’ve defined history merely in terms of western civilization. Women owned property in the Bible. Shocker isn’t it? Judges fashioned a form of government very close to democracy in a kind of republic (since obviously religion favors theocracy). Israel only had a monarchy because they rejected the first form of government handed to them. Welfare is hardly an invention of western civilization and Paul argued for all men being one under Christ what? 1900 hundred years ago.

    I’m sorry Dr logic. You are wasting our times. You have just proven you have no idea what you are trying to sound informed about. You are right about your argument being the same whether applied to christianity or religion in general. On both you are totally uninformed.

  86. “That’s true, but we can say that there is apparent moral progress in some places and not others, and that often, the more religion there is, the less morality there is. ”

    and your argument just got even weaker than I thought possible. Yes obviously our society with its daily killings, rape theft and extortion is so much more moral than when religion was prevalent in our society say a hundred years ago. Thanks you for bringing up the data that refutes both you and Harris. the less religious the society has gotten the more it has broken down the society in terms of morality even if you just look at the criminal aspects of it. Its historically verifiable.

    Your counter to this will be in ignorance pretend that that means that I am referring to your concept of christianity because you – as I said you would – did not understand when I stated that Christianity began before Christianity. Christian roots do not start with Christ. After all the term means “anointed” a reference to Messiah which stretches into Judaism which traces its roots thousands of years back which in turn traces itself back to Abraham which in turn traces itself back to Adam. Christianity is the last revelation of a religion that stretches back further than you can trace beyond the Roman empire that you think it was born in.

    Now we know that you do not believe any of this but you were asked to present evidence of any society that predates religion of any kind and have failed to do so.

    You did link to an article that pretended to prove fairness in primates but alas it did more to prove that they preferred grapes over cucumbers when presented with the possibility of a choice. A fine example of lab coat bias given the stated aim of the researchers

    “the goal of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center is to view great apes as a window to the human past by studying their behavior”

    You might as well have said red meat is good for you by linking to research done by the National Cattle Association.

    anyway back to work. this isn’t getting anywhere real, meaningful or particularly insightful. Its in fact just the usual online atheistic gibberish without depth. I will therefore bow out.

  87. Tom Gilson says:

    oh, dl,

    But the problem is that Christian miracles don’t exceed the noise of nature.

    Really? So, when Jesus rose from the dead it wasn’t noticeable? When Craig Marsh’s stomach was regenerated inside him it wasn’t noticeable? I’ve met Craig; he’s for real. Your problem is that you’ve never heard a miracle account you wouldn’t explain away.

    And every attempt to suppress the noise by doing a scientific analysis OF THE NOISE, you rule as foul because God won’t be part of an experiment.

    So? When God does miracles it’s not as part of an experiment. That doesn’t mean they don’t happen. It’s not ad hoc, either; it’s entirely consistent with what we know of God from the very beginning.

    So, your opinion of interventions or miracles is that they don’t have significant shifts on, say, geopolitics?

    No, I didn’t say that either. I didn’t get a chance to describe my position on “interventions.” I don’t think God “intervenes,” since that implies he is an outsider dipping into creation from time to time. He works constantly, upholding, guiding, and directing persons through an interaction of his free will and ours. And occasionally he does something that noticeably departs from the normal course of natural cause and effect.

    I’m not sure Feser’s position depends on a Thomistic view of God. I don’t disagree with anything he said about God, but I don’t know that I need to be a Thomist in every sense to agree with him on that limited range of topics.

    Sure, but this is a defensive argument.

    As was appropriate to the context. You asked a question and I answered it.

    Thank you for your three examples of moral progress. I’ll make my “next move” when the time comes, over the next week or two. I’m confident you’ll be watching for it.

  88. SteveK says:

    DL,

    I just don’t see that you’ve given an answer to my query in #24. You’re restating the fact that your desires would lack an objective basis.

    No. I’m outlining reasons why I (and you) should care (not prefer or desire) about morality by contrasting the differences between natural ‘morality’ and theistic morality. I’m explaining why it is consistent for me to say what I did.

    But not everything you do requires an objective basis.

    Never did I claim it does. I did explain how my objective morality is indeed, objective, and how I am not being inconsistent. Will you admit you were wrong?

    You say yes. I just don’t see the logic at all.

    The self-proclaimed “doctor” doesn’t see the logic? Let this humble undergrad help the good doctor see it more clearly….

    If I build a sentient robot to murder people, and the robot disobeys me, we wouldn’t say the robot was wrong. It failed to do what I intended it to, but failing to do what one’s creator wants is not always a moral failure.

    You ignored, by choice perhaps, the necessity of God’s holy nature being the key difference between your robot example and the creation event. I think I said the obligation was to a reality that could not be otherwise. You, as robot creator, could be otherwise immoral – and your example shows that I am correct. Do you see the logic now? Think about that for a while until you understand why the difference is highly significant.

    However, I see no basis for God to prefer one morality more than another.

    What part of necessary holy nature don’t you understand, DL? God doesn’t prefer to be holy – God IS holy and could not be otherwise. That’s what Christianity teaches. It has been explained to you time and time and time and time and time and time again.

  89. Charlie says:

    Wow! That was WLC?!

    That’s him all right. Good, right?

    Oh wait, I bet you were being all predictable-like and your were disappointed. Surprise.

    Found your link yet? No? Let me know.

    —–

    Michael Anthony,
    Thanks so much for taking on the seemingly fruitless heavy lifting. It’s been a pleasure reading your comments and I hope you’ll be around.

    As you can see from the links, DL doesn’t listen, doesn’t learn and doesn’t grow. He’s exhausted the interest of just about anyone who’s talked with him here. But your efforts are not wasted, nonetheless.

  90. Charlie says:

    That’s true, but we can say that there is apparent moral progress in some places and not others, and that often, the more religion there is, the less morality there is.

    Wrong as always. There is no such thing as progress if there is not a particular way that things are supposed to be. If morality is determined by our feelings then we are always moral, have always been moral and always will be moral. We are always equally moral and there is no such thing as progress.

    Love your examples. Racial equality, freedom, democracy, women’s rights. Check, check, check and check. Thank you God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

  91. JAD says:

    Michael Anthony:
    “From the perspective of actions and result my son would deserve to die if he ran a series of red lights driving at 140 miles per hour. From the perspective of this father he deserves to live because of the love I have for him.”

    I wanted to comment on this earlier because I think it is an excellent illustration.

    Actually Jesus was saying the same kind of things in his story of the “Prodigal Son.” In the story the son demands his inheritance and leaves home and squanders his wealth on riotous living. Today we would say that he wasted his money partying. Flat broke he ends up working a demeaning job for a pig farmer.

    Did the son deserve the consequences of his actions? I think so.

    Did the father want this to happen to his son? Clearly not.

    Could the father have done anything to prevent his sons irresponsible and reckless actions. Yes, he could have denied his son his right to go off on his own. He could have even forcefully imprisoned his son in his own home, but all those things would have been violating his sons freedom of choice as a morally responsible free agent.

    Human parents confront the same kind circumstances today. I remember visiting my sister a few years ago just after her daughter (my niece) had learned to drive. I remember my niece, on a Friday night, asking her mom for the keys to the family car so that she could drive 15 miles across town to pick up her friend who was coming over for a sleep-over. I hadn’t seen my niece for about five years so I still thought of her as that cute little girl with braces. Now I found myself thinking privately ‘you are not going to let her do that? Do you know the statistics about teenage drivers? Do you know how dangerous that is? And, it is raining out!’ (Actually it was only a light drizzle.)

    So, beside the hazards that you pointed of a teenager driving irresponsibly there are also those ordinary day-to-day hazards.

    My point is that one could easily make the argument that human parents are being morally irresponsible if they do not do everything they can do to keep their children safe by micro-managing their children’s lives and behavior. Certainly it is humanly possible to do something like that. But it would be morally irresponsible to not allow our children to fully develop as morally responsible agents themselves. And, that development involves risk.

    God “the heavenly father” faces the same set of circumstances. It would not be morally right of him to micro-mange the day-to-day decisions of human beings. It certainly would not be right for Him to impose his will on those who have chosen not to believe in him. It is very clear from the early chapters of Genesis that God originally designed human beings as responsible free moral agents. This capacity, by the way, precedes “the Fall.” It is our essence; it is the way we were always meant to be. Indeed, when free will is used as it was originally intended to be used it is a good thing.

    The fact that God is omnipotent does not change any of this. He is limited by our free will the same way a human parent is. If he attempts to use his power to control us he limits our freedom as morally responsible agents.

    Of course the in the story of “The Prodigal Son,” the son comes to his senses and decides to return home. Even though the son was deserving of the consequences of his decision the father was waiting and willing to forgive him. However, it is very clear from the story that the son was not coerced by his circumstances or anything else to return to his father. It was a free will decision on his part. Of course if he had decided not to return to the father the separation would have been forever. That is what we mean by hell. Hell, whatever else it might be, is basically eternal separation from God.

    Where do people get this idea that we become Christians because of a threat of punishment? It is actually the opposite. Our faith is a recognition of Gods love and forgiveness. That is not possible without a free will choice.

  92. JAD says:

    Here is a little thought experiment:

    Suppose everyone in the world (regardless of their religious beliefs) regularly and consistently practiced just two ethical principles taught by Jesus:

    (1) A willingness to forgive others unconditionally, and

    (2) Personally helping a stranger in serious need (as illustrated by the story of the “Good Samaritan”) regardless of race or religion etc.

    Would it make a difference in the world?

    Would our world would be a better place?

    Are we justified in claiming that those kind of things are objective or absolute moral values?

  93. Charlie says:

    Better. Objectively better. More like it is supposed to be.

  94. Charlie says:

    The oxymoron of the term “secular humanism” just hit me. Of course Christianity, the world view that gave us the individual and human rights, is humanistic. It honours man as a planned,important and loved creation of God with intrinsic value grounded in this creative act.
    Secular humanism, and its hand-holding atheism and positivism is actually dehumanizing and dares to call itself a humanism. Morality is a myth, consciousness is an illusion, there is no free will, man is collection of molecules determined by physics and chemistry, the mind is the electrical result of the mass that is the brain, etc. And the individual is merely a product of natural forces and is reduced to a product of societal organization of class, race, gender, nationality, etc.

    How can a world view that denies humanity call itself humanism?

  1. October 21, 2010

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Chris Reese, Apologetics 315. Apologetics 315 said: Science, Morality, and the Right Answer http://j.mp/bL93EH […]